Date of Award
Spring 2025
Document Type
M.A. Essay
First Advisor
Victoria Somoff
Second Advisor
Stuart Finkel
Abstract
This essay analyzes The Smell of Wormwood (1967), a short novel by Soviet Kazakh author Sayin Muratbekov, set in a Kazakh village during World War II. The narrative centers on Ayan, a nine-year-old orphan with a physical disability, who copes with trauma and marginalization by becoming a storyteller for the village children. Focusing on the role of Kazakh folklore—particularly storytelling and initiation rituals—I explore how these cultural forms shape the novel’s characters, structure, and central conflict. Drawing on Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner’s theories of ritual, I argue that Ayan’s storytelling creates an informal liminal space through which the children undergo symbolic transformation. In doing so, the novel gestures toward a collective memory of the Kazakh nomadic past—a cultural lineage that Soviet colonialism sought to suppress. Although The Smell of Wormwood passed Soviet censorship and was widely taught in Kazakh schools as ideologically acceptable children’s literature, I contend that it operates as a decolonial text. By embedding oral traditions within a Soviet literary framework, the novel subtly enacts cultural resistance and affirms Kazakh identity.
Recommended Citation
Akhmerova, Dana, "Ritual as Resistance: Orality, Identity, and Soviet Kazakh Childhood in Sayin Muratbekov’s The Smell of Wormwood" (2025). Comparative Literature M.A. Essays. 200.
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/complit_essays/200
